Welcome to the Fishing Report. It is partly cloudy and a warm 70 degrees in Townsend this morning. The traffic and many tourists are gone. This was a busy weekend for the campgrounds. I don’t know how well the motels and cabin rental companies fared. The Park was pack with people and some of them were fly fishermen.

Little River looks fine but the flow is a little low. I don’t know for sure what the flow numbers are. The data is not being transmitted to the USGS website. I called the Knoxville office early this morning and left a message for the guy who takes care of our gauge. Maybe he will get it going soon. The water temperature is 64 degrees right now.

Fishing conditions are fine. I think you will do better fishing early and late. The sun just popped out and that can cause fishing to be more difficult. The daytime temperatures are going to be warm for the next few days so you will see a spike in the stream temperature during mid-day. We do have a chance for rain over the next few days.

Fishing should be pretty good. You will find tubers and swimmers near the roads during the day. It’s beginning to look a lot like Summer. Your best fishing will be further in the backcountry except for early mornings and late evenings before the swimmers and rock skippers get out on the river and after they leave. Evening hatches should provide some good dry fly fishing. Use Yellow Sally Stonefly or Light Cahill patterns for a dry fly. Also, try ants and beetles or other terrestrial patterns. A nymph selection should include a Bead Head Pheasant Tail, Tellico, Copper John or Green Weenie.

As far as I can tell, we made it through the holiday weekend without anyone getting hurt around here. I couldn’t find any motorcycle accidents in the news. That is probably because Highway 129 also known as the Dragon is blocked by workers securing a rock slide site. People come here from all over the world to ride their motorcycles on that stretch of road. There are often accidents and evacuations there on busy weekends. I read somewhere there were 9 motorcycle related deaths last year by August on the Dragon. Drivers can access the road from the North Carolina side but not from here. It’s a dangerous place. I won’t drive on that road any more.

It looks like we will have a quiet week in Townsend. The week after a holiday is usually slow.